What inspired Dr. Roman Saini to take up IAS examination?

Dr. Roman Saini talks about his inspiration behind giving the IAS exam.

It was always my childhood dream to serve the poor and downtrodden, and with constant incessant hard work in the right direction, under able guidance of my teachers, with unquestionable support of my parents and friends, and with grace of God, I cleared this exam and now will be able to serve the nation.

Duh...

This is how an answer to your question would have been written. But not in this case my friend, as I love to be brutally honest.
Generally speaking, there were some pull factors towards the IAS and then some push factors from M.B.B.S.

Pull Factors

When I was posted in the 7th semester there were a lot of mishaps and lot of malfunctioning in the primary healthcare centre when I was posted in a rural village of Haryana. There were lack of medication, also the doctors were not highly sympathetic towards the treatment of the villagers, there was a lack of awareness among the villagers about the various diseases and ailments. They were still heading to the local ‘Jholachaap’ doctors, who are called alternate healers and the other variety of so called ‘faith healers’. It goes without saying that faith was not really 'healing' and they were getting very pitiful results. There was no clean drinking water and they were defecating outside as there were no toilets in the houses. There was total poverty and they couldn't afford going to the private hospital. In short, there was complete chaos. In that scenario as a doctor I thought I will only be able to touch only so many lives but as a civil servant I will be able to help people on a much larger scale. This is why I chose to go for civil services examination.

Push factors

After that certain push factors were also prevalent as I always wanted a larger than life impact on people so that all the supposedly intelligence and brilliance that has been bestowed upon me by good genetics and better crossing over of genes during meiosis, I could give back to the society as much as I can. That was only possible after being an IAS officer. Also, the health education field is not so good in our country. As any MBBS student would agree that much of what is taught is obsolete and redundant, so I always am a vocal supporter of reform in MBBS syllabus. 

How did I chose to be a doctor?
I was just 14 when I got into 11th standard and at that time I didn't really know if I wanted to become a doctor or not because clearly at that age you don’t have much understanding of the world around you. So, my parents suggested me to take up biology, as my elder brother is also a doctor. I liked reading biology, as a matter of fact I loved studying all three: biology, physics and chemistry and I don’t deny that even now. So just by the fact of liking it I gave the exam and I got selected into the medical college and did my M.B.B.S. Never did I thought of it as a backup option or that I had a backup of some sort if things went south with my IAS exam. If you are thinking about backup you are fearful in your mind and you will have difficulty in clearing the exam. If you already have back up then good, if not then I’ll tell you the best back is the MGNREGS scheme provided by the Govt. of India in which you get Rs.160 per day just working as a labourer, so don’t ever worry about having no back up.

How did I manage between the two?

See first you have to do the bare essentials first and a quality you have to develop is the knack of separating the chaff from the grain. Once you develop this quality you will know what to read to get good marks and to clear the examination. Anyways since medicine was my optional subject it was not all or none between the two. It was more of integrated and cooperative study that happened. Those part of the M.B.B.S syllabus that were coming in the UPSC which I also happened to know 2-3 yrs in advance before the exam were the ones I used to focus on and not so much on the part which was not of importance to the examination. However I did complete justice to M.B.B.S.
Lastly, there are times when you have lot of slack, when you do nothing but curse the system and think why you are not rich or have more hair on your head or why you are not taller or have a good girlfriend or why are you not living on mars and some other thought to keep discussing and cursing on. If you can just avoid and focus on what you can do to improve your life I think you will be able to manage both college/profession with UPSC preparation and come out with flying colours.